Button & Spoon not reopening
THE Covid-19 crisis has resulted in one popular Wexford business closing up its doors permanently. Nuala and Nigel Grant of The Button & Spoon Tea Room in Key West announced that they’ve had to take the difficult decision not to re-open.
The original Button & Spoon tearoom opened in Bridgetown in 2013 before the Grants opted to open up at a second location in Key West in April of 2017. Later they took the decision to close down the Bridgetown café due to a decline in business, however, they enjoyed great success in the heart of Wexford town. Sadly the couple just couldn’t weather the storm posed by Covid-19.
‘On March 15, we closed our tearoom thinking that it would be for a couple of weeks while the country got the Covid-19 crisis under control,’ Nuala explained in statement. ‘As we carefully packed the fridges with produce that would last till April, it never crossed our mind that it would never be used in our special kitchens again.’
As the extent of the crisis hit home, the pair were faced with some difficult decisions.
‘In the last six weeks Nigel and I have sat for hours on end de-constructing our business and our lives trying to find the best way forward in this new world in which we find ourselves and we had to come to the heart wrenching decision not to re-open our baby,’ Nuala said. ‘Our business was built on so much more than just what you saw when you walked through our doors, we had a significant private and corporate catering business and a wedding dessert business and these along with our tearoom were all standing on the power of close human contact.’
The news will also have come as a tough blow for the hard working staff, whom the couple paid tribute to, describing them as ‘most valued friends and family’. ‘We will never adequately explain how much they mean to us and how grateful we are for them.’
For Nuala, it was just not financially viable to keep the operation up and running in the current climate.
‘We truly believed that if we re-opened in the current environment we would lose money every single day and that would be irresponsible to our family, ourselves and our suppliers,’ she said. ‘Over the next number of weeks we have to go through the exceptionally difficult process of winding up our business which is both personally and professional traumatic and we ask for everyone’s understanding as we find the best way forward to all concerned.’
Nuala and Nigel wished to thank all of their loyal customers for their support over the years as the Button and Spoon’s social media accounts disappeared over the weekend.